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Political parties in Parliament have different expectations from Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan’s Mid-term Budget Statement on Wednesday.

The African National Congress’ (ANC) Thaba Mufamadi, who is also the Chairperson of Parliament's Finance Committee, says the ruling party expects further spending on infrastructure.

“We expect as the ANC that the medium-term budget term policy statement will further seek to consolidate fiscal spending and further consolidate infrastructure spending, so that we can propel economic growth.”

Democratic Alliance (DA) Spokesperson on Finance, Tim Harris says Minister Gordhan should introduce bold reforms to deal with the twin deficits in the fiscus and current account.

“The Democratic Alliance thinks the Minister should table a bill planned to tackle the fiscal deficit, where we are spending more money than we are getting in for a fifth year in a row and the currency account deficit where South Africa's imports and its exports reflecting problem with competitiveness in our economy. So it's up to the Finance Minister to tackle both these deficits by introducing bold reforms.”
Minister Gordhan's mid-term budget speech will begin at 2pm today. It will be carried live on SAfm, with a panel of experts commenting immediately afterwards. SABC Digital News will stream the speech live on sabc.co.za/news, as well as on youtube.com/sabcnews.